Based on everything I've read about D3, here's how I'm expecting the Diablo 3 expansion pack announcement at BlizzCon 2013 to go;
DIABLO 3 EXPANSION PACK UNVEILED
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced plans for the first expansion pack to Diablo 3, its award-winning online action role-playing cash grab game.
Unveiled at the company’s seventh BlizzCon® gaming festival, Diablo 3: Raging Mists of Travincal will bring sweeping changes to the world of Sanctuary. Players will be able to adventure as one new playable race, the taxman, and take on new challenging zones that have twice the amount of item drops.
“In addition to the new referral systems, Diablo 3: RMT will add new features and a large amount of new items and loot for players to sell,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re excited to be offering a first glimpse of RMT for attendees of BlizzCon, and we look forward to sharing more information with everyone as development progresses.”
There are a couple new zones and stuff, maybe some new quests, but all of that is insignificant compared to the major enhancements we have made to the game. This is what our players wanted, not what we wanted. New features coming with the game’s first expansion include:
It is anticipated that Diablo 3: RMT will become the world’s most popular online action role-playing cash grab game (OCGG).
For more information on Diablo 3: RMT, visit Blizzard Entertainment’s official website at www.diablocash.com. To keep pace with the continued growth of Diablo 3 as well as development on other Blizzard games, the company is currently hiring for numerous banking, financial, security specialists (with an emphasis on money laundering), promotional marketing specialist positions, and PR wizards.
(Cautionary Note: The Blizzard Promise™ is a trademarked property of Activision Blizzard Inc. and does not necessarily mean an actual promise. In fact, it's just a word that doesn't actually mean anything at all.)
I thought that this old post on DC Universe's promised monthly content patches deserved a follow up; [LINK]
With considerable doubt, Sony promised that significant content would be released for DC Universe Online every month. That is, new raids, new races, new collections, new missions, new events, new items, gear, and appearances... every month.
So, what is their track record in just the past 8 months?
Jan 2011 DCUO Released
Feb 2011 Major content patch (Update 1)
Mar 2011 Social and chat features added
Apr 2011 Partial content (Update 2)
May 2011 Regular maintenance
Jun 2011 A couple new missions and a lot of fixes (Update 3)
Jul 2011 Regular maintenance
Aug 2011 Regular maintenance
That didn't take very long at all.. they promised to release major content every month. This promise was made 1 month before the first content patch, and then it just ended. They only got past the first content patch before breaking their promise.
DC Universe Online is merging all of their servers into "megaservers"; [LINK]
As everyone knows, when servers, realms or shards are shutdown or merged that usually means dwindling subscribers.
In this specific situation, 26 servers are being merged into 4. There are so few people playing now, apparently they can make them into regional servers.
Don't let the public relations and marketing spin of "super servers" or "mega servers" fool you.. they're just being called that to lighten the blow of what's really happening. Merging servers is a death knell, and calling them "mega servers" is smokescreen.
"We really tried to design the features of these games to leverage the needs of the games. And so Diablo III is -- and previous Diablo games as well we're very item-centric games with the a lot of item trading, without a good mechanism really for doing that." -- Michael Morhaime from the 2nd Quarter Earnings call [LINK]I'm surprised that this didn't receive any media attention. This was during the QA period when the C-levels weren't prepared with scripts. According to Blizzard, Diablo 3 is a "VERY ITEM-CENTRIC" game.
During that same QA session, Michael Morhaime also went on to compare this to the SC2 Map Marketplace revenue generator; "I think that some of the things we're doing on the back end to support the Diablo III (RMT) actually can be leveraged in StarCraft II to support that system which is great."
From everything else I've read about Blizzard and Diablo 3, here's how I see everything connected together;
* the current state of Blizzard games is seeing a "dumbing down" of their games to make them more "accessible" for more people
* simplified gameplay where anyone can jump in
* the games are getting less fun and are more interested in building up a player base, creating more microtransactions, and finding new ways to generate revenue through services
* the Diablo 3 game is built around items. Even Blizzard said it's a "very item-centric game."
* you can cube deconstruct items on the spot or wherever you are in-game
* there's a shared stash that is accessible by all of your characters
* items can be sold or auctioned wherever you are, you don't need to be at a vendor
* salvaging and scrolls of wealth
* there are gold sales values attached to all items which are visible even when you're not at a vendor so that you can immediately see it's gold value
* banks/stashes are really large for all of the loot you'll be collecting
* the interface is designed around item management
* the AH allows for auto-bidding, instant buyouts, secure item transfers
* Blizzard wants to give players "more options for the items they don't want"
* Jay Wilson said that a mailing system for giving items is not high priority for them. The selling of items is more important apparently.
* also according to Jay Wilson, the high end items in Diablo 3 will be BOE
"We do have bind-on-equip for the highest end items in the game."Do you see a pattern developing here? Everything about the game is about the ITEMS.. and what happens to those items? They're sold and Blizzard profits.
"The reason for this is that we want people to be able to trade them, but we also want to remove the high-end items from the economy."
The skill system has been completely revamped with all skills removed. Where do this skills come from now? Well, ITEMS of course. Instead of traits or skills, everything can be customized through the items you wear now; life or energy stealing, knockbacks, random effects, improving skills, distances, or cooldowns, you name it. Instead of having a talents interface for example, you can do all of the same but through items.. making them more important for gameplay.
Blizzard said that this is what the players want too. Rob Pardo said; "Players want this.. we could take a harder stance, but with Diablo, we think (the Auction House) will end up being a good thing." How can they know so little about what players want? This sounds like just a smoke screen.
Here's what the game has become;
* the game has been simplified so that anyone can play it
* the game was designed from the ground up with item trading and sales in mind like an addiction card collection game
* the game is all about the items, it does not require skill
* player growth is all about the items
* skills and talents were all removed, it's all based on items now
* questing and raiding is all about the items.. it takes items to do it, and you do it for more items to sell
* game enjoyment can only be accomplished by having the right items
* in order to get items, you have to pay for them
There's also a domino effect taking place here. Because the entire game was built from the ground up to be based on RMT, many of Diablos features were changed to accommodate the design philosophy. They're not permitting mods so that the RMT system can't be exploited or users can't automated sales. A persistent online connection is required. They have heavy social integration to bring in more players and get them addicted to item farming.
And then there are the players who have been fooled by this. They imagine themselves being able to play Diablo 3 as a job that will be able to support them financially.
Gold sales is a very niche activity, and the very few people who do it can make a lot of money. One person playing all day might be able to walk away with $50-100 per day, but that's only because there are so little players doing it. By legitimizing RMT, suddenly that $100 for 1 person becomes that same $100 for 100 people.
Not only that but because everyone will be doing it, and everyone is going to be extremely frugal about buying but not selling, it will completely devalue all items within the economy.
If you want to make some real profit, sell items during the stupidity period.. the first couple months of the release. Item farming is much more dangerous for Hardcore Players too, so those items will be worth more if you want to take the risk. Blizzard thought ahead for this too, apparently there will be restrictions on the buying and selling of goods for those who play in Hardcore mode. They put a lot of thought into this RMT system, and it just seems that Diablo 3 was built FROM an earlier RMT game prototype.
I wonder when Blizzard will be launching they're in-game Casino service so that players can gamble real money with other players.
Correction: After listening to the conference call recording, Michael Morhaime did in fact attribute the 11.1 million subscribers to the end of Q2 only, so I heard it wrong. The Q3 meeting should be very interesting now and after the "F2P" WOW Starter pack I'm curious if they'll be reworking their Subscriber definition.
-----
Michael Morhaime adjusted their total subscriber levels to 11.4 to 11.1 million during yesterday's financial call. I've noticed that many people are, for some reason, saying that it only dipped to 11.1 for that quarter alone but it's higher now.
In actuality, Morhaime was reporting the 11.1 million subscribers as it stands right now (August 3 2011). It's not just subscribers for the second quarter 2011 ending June 30th, it's at this present moment.
This means that almost a month after the Cataclysm launch in China (July 12 2011), and over a month after the 4.2 content launch and simultaneous WoW Starter Edition launch (June 29 2011), they have still lost a considerable number of players.
The first month of a launch is when the largest number of players join too, and if you remember China made up about 50% of World of Warcraft's worldwide subscribers.
Something to think about.
I think there needs to be expansions into new territory and countries due to the growing boredom being experienced in existing regions. It's mostly the novelty wearing off too, and the "boredom" is typical of every game after a certain period of time. That seems to be one of their new strategies to increase subscribership.. but I wonder which countries are still left.
Robert Bridenbecker, VP of Blizzard Online Technologies had an interview with MTV where he described his surprise surrounding fans reactions to Diablo 3's online requirements. [LINK]
One of revelations that got the most attention was the fact that both the beta and the final version of "Diablo 3" would require a constant internet connection to play.Does this remind you of the plot to "Wag the Dog"?
While everyone is really upset over another more important issue (RMT), Blizzard is diverting everyones attention to more minor concerns (Online Connection).
They didn't even mention RMT in the interview.
This either means that Blizzard is NOT surprised at all over the negative fan reaction to the new RMT system. Or, they're simply trying to change the subject and tell fans what they're "really" mad about. :)
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 8/3/11
Looks like they posted their 2nd Quarter results about 15 minutes earlier than the call. [LINK]
That's probably how a lot of websites release call information while it's still ongoing.. they just read ahead to all of the future announcements. :)
It looks identical to last quarter's release information.. everything is the exact same "Better than expected results.." and bragging about Black Ops, Cataclysm and Starcraft 2.
I wasn't even paying attention, but apparently Cataclysm launched in China on July 12th. There's nothing much else of interest in the company outlook, so I'm hoping something interesting might be mentioned on the call. I really hope it won't just be about the new Diablo 3 details that have already been released.
There's also another note; "Since Blizzard Entertainment has not confirmed a launch date for its next global release, the company's calendar year outlook at this time does not include a new game from Blizzard in 2011." Time will tell.
* They also claimed that Skylanders will be as big as Pokemon.
* There's worry about Starcraft 2, they're not making as much money as expected hence the new Starcraft 2 Starter Edition.
* Subscriptions have dropped again, they're now at 11.1 million subscribers worldwide which is back at what they were in 2008.
* Good comment on the new RMT Auction House; Mike Morhaime stated that their players WANTED THE FEATURE which is why they're doing it.
* They're working hard to ship Diablo 3 by the end of the year, but they're not making any commitments.
* They will be expanding World of Warcraft into new countries, but they're not allowed to say which yet. Michael Morhaime said; "There are other countries that we're looking at beyond these as well, but I don't have anything that I can talk about."
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 8/2/11
"It's highly unlikely that RMT will be permitted in Diablo 3, though it's certain that some players will choose to engage in it, as they have in every such game so far released." - http://www.diablowiki.net/Real_Money_TradingIn Blizzard's new RMT Auction House, each item you post for sale will cost a fixed rate. It's not a percentage of the value of the item either.. this way people will only sell valuable items and so the AH doesn't get overloaded. That's the reason they're telling people, but there are other reasons.
B.NET will now operate like PayPal where it will store your hard earned cash and you will have an option to "Cash Out". Of course, there will probably be restrictions in place as well as transaction fees, logistics, and shipping fees to cash out. They've learned a lot from PayPal. After all, they have a very loving relationship with PayPal.. they helped Blizzard destroy all of their RMT competition after all.
This is also a great way to get people's feet wet in anticipation of Blizzard's upcoming games and especially Titan. Rob Pardo said that this was the changing landscape of games and "it's more fun" this way. [LINK]
What Blizzard isn't saying about this is that there are a lot of negative impacts to running an in-house RMT service. Blizzard has already admitted that RMT destroys the economy, destroys the game, ruins the game playing experience, and encourages increased botting and account hacking. But what else is going on that hasn't been shared?
* Blizzard claims that all transactions will be between players but everything is done completely anonymous. What's to stop Blizzard from selling items themselves using their own conjured characters? They'll be practically printing their own money.
* There are many more incentives now to hack accounts, scam and bot.
* Because of the limitations in the AH and random generators for loot, Blizzard can control the quantity and costs of items at whim. Blizzard has found a loop hole to legalize gambling in Diablo 3.
* They get a cut from the amount of players making AH posts, but since they can basically control how often players make the posts, or find ways of encouraging them to make posts, they can control how much revenue they make from this new type of gambling.
* And it is a big gamble for the players. You'll post an item for $3, and someone will undercut you. To cancel and resubmit, you need to pay a new service fee. Each time they post an item, and it doesn't succeed, you lose money. And Blizzard can control all of these odds just like casino machines.
* It's a very dubious method of creating indirect virtual gambling without actually calling it gambling or applying for licensing. They can alter loot statistics to increase sales per person.
* All of this sounds highly illegal if you ask me.. but that's what loopholes are for. Blizzard is using a brilliant method of manipulating players; they can control the odds of how many unsuccessful sales there are, how many people are selling, and how many people are undercut. And each one of those counts as a win to the House (that is, "Blizzard").
* We'll be able to tell right away if they do indeed consider this gambling. For example, real auctions will last several days to weeks. But, if the Diablo 3 AH has auctions that only last for minutes or hours (less than 24 hours), then you'll know right away that they want players to post as many different auctions as much as possible since all of the unsuccessful auctions will generate revenue.
* Since they can practically print their own money, this is going to completely destroy the in-game economy.. just like what happened to the ruble. They're not selling gold directly, but they are creating virtual items of value and it's the same thing.
* This new feature will also make big changes to player attitudes. There's now a lot more desperation and consequences associated with auctioning items now. Players will be so desperate to sell their auctions (if it doesn't sell, they lose the down payment fee) that they'll advertise in "trade chat" with much more fervor. Imagine all of the spamming, tricks, and bad things associated with AH sales, and then multiply that by ten.
* Also, imagine the amplification of anger when things don't work out.. rather than fake money, you're now dealing with your own pocket.
* The other thing that happens is that this becomes a PAY2WIN game. You pay $5 for max gear, it's no fun, and unfair for all other players. If you're rich, you'll always to better than everyone else no matter how hard they work.
This will all be very interesting to see what happens.
One thing is certainly clear; the new B.NET bucks are a really awesome way to launder money in the real world. Thanks Blizzard for making things easier for criminals.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 8/2/11 (with new edits and additions below)
After years and years of anti-RMT posts, idealism, the lawsuits against RMT companies, and official statements regarding the negative impacts of RMT.. Blizzard is now joining them because the money is just too much to pass up.
We're all hypocrits, but it's even worse for those who situate themselves on high horses.
Blizzard even made an official "We would like to make a clear statement here.." anti-gold post at one point.. it was online for 3 years, but then promptly removed before making the D3 announcement; http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html
So, I've attached it here for your enjoyment. Oh, and this too [LINK]
* Blizzard says RMT has "detrimental effects they have on all players, including their own customers, as well as on the game environment as a whole."
* Blizzard says players who participate in RMT are supporting spamming, botting, and keylogging.
* Blizzard says that these activities diminish the gameplay experience for everyone.
* Blizzard says RMT encourages and increases botting, spamming, and account hacking.
* Blizzard says that people don't realize "the large impact it has on the game economy".
* Blizzard says RMT is unethical.
* Blizzard has even gone as far to say that RMT is "illegal".
* Blizzard considers it exploitative activity as it abuses the economy.
* Blizzard says RMT exchange "negatively impacts" the game environment by "detracting from the value of the in-game economy."
* Blizzard says RMT devalues everything in-game and it ruins the economy.
* Blizzard says as a result it also ruins the gaming experience for everyone.
* Blizzard stated that they're not interested in RMT.
* Blizzard has always had a firm opposition to RMT, but justifies the use of "cosmetic RMT" (that is, pet sales, texture changes, mounts, etc.) because it doesn't impact fairness of the game.
By the way, if you're a gamer, please don't use the word legal or illegal when referring to RMT. It's very embarrassing when I see forum or blog comments that say "Blizzard is now making it LEGAL to sell virtual items!"
There's a huge difference between internal company policies and actual law.
Here are some other related links for your enjoyment.
* "The Lawbringer: Legal gold sales? Not a Blizzard's chance in Hell" [LINK]
* "Blizzard Won't Support Legit RMT Service" [LINK]
* "You won't buy gold in World of Warcraft from Blizzard. You just won't." [LINK]
* Blizzard lawsuit v. RMT [LINK]
* "Blizzard has rules for their RMT.. they won't charge for any item that means anything in game -- cosmetic items and looks are fair game, but actual gear or "integral services" (whatever that means exactly) is a no for them." [LINK]
* Rob Pardo: No Microtransactions in D3, only WOW. [LINK]
* For other interesting stuff, just do a Google search for "Blizzard will never" and "Blizzard would never", etc. :)
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/31/11
Well.. looks like it's been confirmed that Blizzard will indeed be launching a Real Money Trading system for Diablo 3!
They said they would never do this for any of their games.. but then again, they've done this a lot: said one thing, did the opposite.
They're incorporating this new system into Battle.net, so it's pretty clear that they have this new "revenue generator" planned for their future games. The Titan MMO has been rumored to include a quite substantial buy/sell system in real life (for example, a lot of virtual and real products and services), so this is all starting to make more sense now.
I can't believe they're doing this.. maybe with enough fan uproar, this new paid service can be shelved just like Real ID? Doubtful.. this is going to make them a lot of money and it can't be ignored.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/26/11
Ever since the Cataclysm mistake, the growing boredom of WoW, and the big chunk of subscribers Blizzard has lost to RIFT they're really going to have to pump out something unexpected and awesome.
They had originally planned on releasing X4 and X5 in 2012, as per the Product Release Slate, but because of Cataclysm they're going to have to change their plans quite dramatically to fix things.
They also have a lot of competitors coming up soon too. RIFT took away approximately 600k players, SWTOR will take away probably around the same amount, TERA Online will probably take away of 300k chunk, and the skies the limit for Guild Wars 2 but it could be anywhere between 2 and 4 million players.
They'll be able to distract gamers and investors for a little while by focusing on Diablo 3 sales and "subscribers", but WoW is still one of the biggest money makers for Activision and they need to do something drastic to attract players back. That is, unless, they're planning on retiring growth on the game within the next 2-3 years.
After learning from the Cataclysm mistake, X4 better not include a remake of Outlands. Remaking old content has simply not worked and I trust they've learned from their mistakes. They need to create awesome new zones, wrap up all lose ends, and push the main "story" into brand new territory. There needs to be a new focus for players, and some changes to gameplay to improve things. If they're really serious about keeping the game alive, X4 will have more than 1 new hero class, more than 1 new race, new quest types, a 3rd faction, mounted combat, at least 2 awesome professions, and a true expansion of everything.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/25/11
This is Rick. He's the creepy guy who has had the permanent "I'm going to kill you in your sleep" look all season.
This is just one of many things that bothers me about Falling Skies.
He keeps going on and on about how he likes the aliens better, how they're his real parents, how cool they are, how much he wants to return to them, and how he doesn't give a rat's ass about humans.
In Episode 7, he finally reveals that he thinks he's an alien. I really appreciated the dramatic "shocking reveal" music when he said this too, like it hasn't been plainly obvious this entire time and that the story hasn't been leading up to this point all along.
I hate it when writers do this.. now there will be an annoying story where his sudden but inevitable betrayal puts the survivors in jeopardy.
Now that his dad is out of the way, all of this can finally happen.. talk about your contrived situations. The other cliche that pisses me off is how everyone is keeping really important secrets to themselves.
When my world is being destroyed by aliens and I discover their weaknesses, I definitely won't share that information with anyone.
And why is it taking them so long to dissect an alien when they've had plenty of bodies since the beginning? Those skitters better not be converted humans or genetically engineered soldiers.. that will really piss me off.
What ever happened to good story telling?
Professor Tom says at the end of the episode, "Next time I'll trust my instincts." Rick keeps telling everyone how he hates them and wants to kill them.. your instincts and judge of character are poor to say the least.
Well at least now, I hope the writers can get rid of the creepy kid.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/25/11
For some reason, IGN reported how the Diablo 3 Beta icon "secretly" appeared on Battle.net and then went on to say that "supposed insiders" have suggested that the Diablo 3 beta was scheduled for release this summer.
Even "internet detectives" have unearthed new Diablo III info on Battle.net. [LINK]
IGN, this has been a known fact for some time now. Even Michael Morhaime officially announced that the Diablo 3 beta was targeted for July-Sept 2011. Everyone has known that the beta was going to start during the last few months of 2011, but insiders have announced that D3 was going to be announced at Blizzcon for a Christmas release. Beta testing for Blizzard is really just a sneak peek of the game.. even during beta testing periods, they've hardly made any changes to the game before retail launch.
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Original Post Date: 7/24/11
You know what? Boubouille has inspired my to create my own fake news leak and allow other people to take initial credit for it.
I'll use just basic or reasonable information to create some kind of leak, something that will fool multiple news sites and blogs.
Although I can't reveal any information here, I might use code or image attachments that way information on the "leak" can't be found using search engines. I'll call it "Project Bubu" henceforth, and maybe start with something small and easy first.
** Update:
Well.. I create a fake leak that looked legitimate, but it sat there for like 3 weeks and no one noticed. I was really disappointed.. apparently, there very few people that search online resumes through Google looking for unannounced games.
So, I ended up creating a puzzle that leaked REAL information. I dropped hints with Siliconera, Kotaku, and Superannutation. I'm amazed that another few weeks have passed and they never even looked into the information. It was fully real, and users would have loved to hear about this information that wouldn't be announced for another month yet. So disappointed.. it's like I need to spell everything out for these guys.
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Original Post Date: 7/22/11
MMO-Champion.com has just made a news post about the WoW Brazil announcement and it's connection to the product slate leak as well.
What's disappointing about that blog article is that Boubouille, the mmo-champion.com administrator, pretty much goes on to take credit for predicting it first, leaking the Product Release slate first, and then going on to say how right he is about these leaks on his blog.
This guy needs to be dick slapped. For one, the Product Release slate was first leaked on a Chinese forum, where it was then picked up by mmogamesite.com, and continued from there to multiple news sites and blogs like mmo-champion. Second, the Portuguese translation of WOW has been known for a long time, even before the leak and before Boubouille "discovered it" by looking at the localization data.. tons of people saw that before him.
A lot of people even forget about when that Product Release Schedule was first "leaked" on mmo-champion. The news post was heavily edited from the original he posted, and then he went on to admit the post was a fake, then he changed it again to "just kidding."
This isn't the first time he's taken credit for leaks from other sources or has been wrong about his own predictions. He predicted that Cataclysm would launch on November 2nd (which it looks like he just based on previous expansion pack information, rather than having an inside track). Even expansion pack info "leaked" first on mmo-champion.com was actually derived from other websites.. at later dates, though, he went on to attack these webpages; "Seriously, who the fuck takes mmowned as a reliable source to the point where news sites will just repost it without any double check? Now I'm sad, or mad, or both."
And herein lies the rub.. Boubouille just reposted the information from mmowned without a double check.
He takes information from another website, then calls it an unreliable source of information, questions people who take information from the website, then gets mad at people who just repost information from the website. You fucking are that people Boubouille.
Most recently, he has vehemently denied any legitimacy to "Vengeance of the Void". Joystiq.com has also confirmed that their "highly vetted internal sources at Blizzard have confirmed it's a fake." Wouldn't that be a punch to the face to be proven wrong when the next expansion pack announcement hits? The document is strange, but it's probably not too far from the truth.. 90 cap, no new hero classes, a couple new races, and changes to Outlands.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/19/11
They say that there are cultural and societal factors that influence a persons decision to pirate software. China is frequently used as an example, due to the cultural feelings of segregation from their authority figures. However, have any of these researchers studied the cultural impact of their own culture? Everyone's always interested in other countries, but never their own.
In Europe and North America, the common excuse for piracy is "because the game is too expensive." But they don't actually have to play the game at all. It's a conscious decision, but they choose to break the law. I think people use this excuse because they really don't understand the underlying reason WHY they are pirating in the first place.. without deep introspection, it's just the best answer that makes the most logical sense.
The reason people pirate is because it's easy. And you have been trained since birth to always take the easy path. In fact, the same people who tell you it's acceptable to pirate are the same ones who punish you for pirating.
* Our society encourages over consumption, self entitlement, and excess.
* Music encourages us to take the path of least resistance. Life is easy, do whatever you want, do what makes you feel good, always take the easy route.
* Movies, books, TV, and advertising (Nike's "Just Do It") all tell us the same thing.
* You're beautiful, so you don't need to work hard for anything in your life and everything should be handed to you.
* Educational and school systems have been systematically manipulated to make it easier for students to advance in grade. These changes were made due to the laziness of teachers and parents, neither of them want to put in any hard work to fix the student.
* Television raises our kids because it's hard work to play with and raise them ourselves. This is the same television that also bombards us with messages of easy living and avoiding hard work.
* Pharmaceutical companies produce drugs to make life easier.
* You don't need to work out or even word hard to lose weight, just use this easy exercise device or eat this pill.
* Laws are relaxed to make it easier on justice and enforcement systems.
* Video games are given difficulty levels to make it easier for certain people.
* Video games have built in cheat codes to make the game easier. Game developers leave these cheat codes in, and encourage players to take the easy path.
* Kids shows tell children to relax, have fun, enjoy life, do whatever you feel like.. but don't work hard.
* Kids shows also teach that it's perfectly acceptable to copy someone's work or art. "It's okay to copy, because that makes it extra special."
* More increases to social assistance; let's help even more people who don't want to work.
* Tools are created not to make a job more efficient, but rather to make it easier for the worker.
* Blizzard constantly nerfs World of Warcraft to make it easier for more players. It's too hard for them boo hoo :(
* It's so common everywhere else that the term "nerf" has entered mainstream language.
* Our society idolizes people like Mark Zuckerberg for theft and lack of work. More and more people want to be like him.. who needs an education or work hard when you just take the easy way out and steal it from someone else who worked hard? Fictional and non-fictional gangsters are idolized in the same way.
* Television and film glamorizes self entitlement, being lazy, and doing everything as easy as possible.
* There are popular books on how to marry rich and make your life easier.
* Lotteries, gambling, fortune telling, horoscopes, mediums, etc.
* Illegal drugs are an escape from reality. In order to make your life easier, you actually make it worse.
* We're taught to take credit for other people's work. That's just how the corporate game works after all.
* We're taught that if it's too hard then just give up.
Steam is a very good example of how making something easy has reduced piracy.
I wonder if any of these researchers have studied piracy within hard working families? I can tell you one thing; when you come from a hard working family, you're taught to earn your keep and nothing comes free. When piracy does happen, it's usually rare or due to ignorance.
Here's what I see;
You want to imprison or punish me for pirating.. but, I'm just the way you made me. And then right after you punish me, you tell me it's okay to do it again and again.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/13/11
I have no idea how many viewers the show has, nor do I even know where to go to find that kind of information. I've also only watched the first episode, but I figured it set the pace for the rest of the season.
In order to determine the success of a show, I simply watch torrent traffic. I find that torrent activity is a huge reveal on the popularity and potential success of TV shows, films, games, and any other form of entertainment. And right now, The Nine Lives of Chloe King is not doing very well at all.. even when it's free and easy to download, no one wants to watch it.
When the cancellation announcement does come, I'm sure you'll also see many online publications exploiting the "Nine Lives" title as humor. It's just like the ever predictable "fail to the king baby" DNF jokes after the reviews came out.
While I'm on this subject, if you have the skill and ever wanted a highly successful web app, you should look into a torrent traffic aggregator. Nothing that actually links to torrents, but rather captures historical torrent traffic details (seeders, leechers, time/date) on a daily basis. Torrent traffic is great way of measuring potential success of TV shows especially. If NetFlix incorporated newer streaming TV shows, it would also be a great source of predicting success.
Once you've established some historical data, it makes it much easier to determine a scoring system for each TV show, game, or film. If you want to get fancy, you could also include ratings or reviews, how many people rated the item (more important than the actual rating itself), twitter chatter (are people talking about it?), and miscellaneous comments made about the show.
Not only would this be interesting for viewers, but this data would also prove to be highly valuable for the media networks, producers, and associated management teams. This even has the potential be a high performing paid service.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/12/11
I sort of wish I had created a blog before the last episode of Mentalist's Season 3. I had thought it was obvious that Craig O'Laughlin was working for Red John since he was brought into the show just before Todd Johnson was burned in that holding cell and then it was fully confirmed when he demonstrated no care for Grace's safety. There's still a lot left to theorize about though. :)
There are three things that stood out in the final season.
* The first is that things are getting really weird for J.J. LaRoche. He acts all suspicious, it appears that he hands off the cuff-keys (or a pick lock) to that terrorist (Gupta), then he acts all nervous like he's going to do something bad, and then suddenly Gupta is killed in the backseat of the car. LaRoche says, "He tried to escape, he went for a gun, I had no choice." Even though he never moved in the car, and the only closest gun was on the police officer sitting next to him. His holster, however, was on the right side of his body meaning that Gupta would have had to lean on top of him, reach over to the other side of the car, and try to unholster the gun.. but he never actually moved. I don't know how they could have made this more obvious that LaRoche didn't want him questioned about his connection to Red John.
I guess it makes sense that the writers rushed this so soon. If Gupta had suddenly been killed in Season 4 in another holding cell, then everyone would know that R.J. is still alive. But, they want everyone to think RJ is dead since he'll be making a "surprise return" later in Season 4.
The writers are trying to do too many things though, and they're just confusing the plot. It's really just getting silly now too; LaRoche frames Hightower, Hightower goes into hiding, suddenly RJ and all of this friends want Hightower killed even though she doesn't know anything. Now that Craig is dead and revealed to be the mole, I guess Hightower doesn't need to be in hiding any more and LaRoche presumably won't be suspected to be the mole anymore.
* The second thing that stood out is the "red shirt guy" in the final scene between Patrick Jane (PJ) and Red John (RJ).
Here's a video link to the scene I'm talking about: [LINK]
What's interesting about this is the scene where PJ stands up. The "red shirt guy" stands up and walks away at the same time. There is also a lot of strange hesitance when first standing up (gets up and down then up) as though we was waiting for the exact moment to stand up. Almost as if the director instructed him specifically what to do.
Second, watch all of the extras. It always fun just to watch all of the extras instead of the main actors. They walk back and forth and keep circling in the mall (before RJ shows up) and the scene over and over. Throughout the entire episode, the "red shirt guy" only makes this one appearance and he's not reused anywhere else. How very odd..
Third, the entire scene was built around the proximity of "red shirt guy" to RJ. "Red shirt guy" first entered the scene and sat down before RJ. Now, either the scene was initially setup wrong or the "red shirt guy" was added last minute. The two tables between the "red shirt guy" and RJ were moved very close together for that one shot and it's purpose was not to get a cleaner picture. Even their chairs were accidentally setup wrong during the relocation. "Red shirt guy" went from 2 chairs to 3 chairs space totally different, and RJ went from 3 chairs to 2 chairs.
I might be over analyzing this, but it appears that the scene was intentionally setup to bring the two guys very close together and the "red shirt guy" received special instructions from the director.
Since there was no need to ever move him in the first place, he's either there with purpose (another friend of Red John), he's a red herring (which means they have plans for more RJ in the future) or he's just a really bad extra.
* The third and final thing that stood out was the conversation between PJ and RJ.
This was an example of another contrived and unrealistic situation created by the writers. PJ is supposed to be a smart man, and yet he never actually ask for real proof proof that this man indeed RJ.
PJ would have asked a very specific question that only RJ would know. Instead, he just says "I don't know that you really are Red John" and then he provides information that the real RJ could have told him to say, just like everything else he's said until this point.
Red John is retired and he's all about manipulating people from a distance, never being directly involved or following people, and having them do his dirty work for him. Many of the "newer" Red John cases are probably just his friends following very specific instructions.
In order to receive real proof, PJ would have asked something specific. "That's all well and good, but what were they wearing? What music was playing? Oh, so you remember every smell with great detail.. but you don't remember what they were wearing or anything else?"
Seeing as how everything was very rushed in this episode, it's no surprise that the writers screwed the pooch on this scene and ended up with lazy and unimaginative writing. They practically screamed that this guy was not RJ.
I wonder if they'll remember to fully investigate the deceased (fake RJ) in the next season. The first couple episodes might just focus on PJ in jail awaiting trial (maybe even solving crimes while in prison), but RJ did have a gun after all and even though there were security cameras in the mall, PJ could have easily walked into a blind spot and just claim that RJ pulled a gun on him first and he simply acted in self defense. There are a ton of ways non-clever writers can write him out of his predicament.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/7/11
I hate that word.. a "game changer."
This next episode is a game-changer. Writer C explains why his episode is a game changer. This will be a TRUE game changer.
Seriously, STFU. Nothing ever changes, the stories remain stale and derivative, and there is never any character or real plot development. It's just another newly rushed plot that will carry you to the end of the season.
I see that the Doctor Who writers and promoters use this word in great excess.
To be honest, I've watched every single episode but I've never actually liked the new series. Strange isn't it? I think it's because I'm just waiting for those rare episodes that are actually pretty good. I much preferred the pre-2005 Doctor Who episodes and I wish they had taken a ST:TNG approach to the new series. That is, kept it as a serious science fiction with occasional humor like the original. Instead, they turned it into a silly parody and incoherent mess but with really great special effects. The actors who have played the Doctor's are brilliant however, but the rest of the supporting cast can suck it.
They're taking a break now because they have no idea where the show is going and have run out of more elaborate science-fictioney ideas.
What's most disappointing is that they've become a plot-factory pumping as many different far fetching ideas as possible, but with no clear plans of the future or understanding of the past. They rush something together, throw in a word or phrase (like "the darkness", "the void", "the silence", "the bad wolf", etc.) to be "explained" at a later date, and the writers just say "Well, we'll just figure it out later." Every episode is just becoming a chain reaction to the previous episode, which was written by someone else.
One thing that's consistent with Doctor Who though is that every character stays the exact same, there's never any character development, and they never learn or change.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/4/11
It's funny how people draw a line on what constitutes piracy. If you pirate 20 video games per month for example, you're a pirate. But, if you only pirated a couple cheap games a few years ago.. well, you're not a pirate.
Many will only associate pirating with video games or applications, but conveniently ignore music, movies, art, or written material. The definition of piracy also varies from country to country. Piracy in one country might be perfectly legal in another. What piracy is can also become a moral or ethics debate, but here's roughly what the universally accepted definition of pirating means: the unauthorized use, appropriation, or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material or ideas.
Since it's safe to assume that if you're murdered once, you would still be labeled as a murderer, it would also be accurate that if you've ever pirated (even once) you're still a pirate. You might be a reformed pirate or a remorseful pirate.. but you're still a pirate.
Knowing this, try to examine your own life:
* Have you ever downloaded or used a copyrighted song, game, or application?
* Have you ever downloaded or used a copyrighted picture, photograph, clip art, logo, book, comic, or other piece of art?
* Have you ever recorded a TV show, movie or commercial using a tape recorder, VHS/Beta, or digital recorder?
* Have you ever recorded a song off the radio?
* Have you ever photocopied a book or any kind of copyrighted text?
* Have you ever watched an unlicensed video on YouTube? Listened to a song?
If you answer yes (or even a "sort of") to any of these questions then you're a pirate.
Things can get even more complicated:
* Have you ever watched an online or streaming video? Are you 100% positive it was licensed for your viewing?
* Ever listened to music online?
* Did you take a screenshot of a video game or webpage and save it?
* Is your desktop wallpaper licensed for your use?
* How much do you know about the software on your own PC?
* Do you use Windows? Then you're a pirate. Why you ask? I take it you weren't aware that Microsoft software contained patented code owned by other companies... they've lost legal cases for pirating code, but you were still technically using their code, and it was unauthorized for your use.
* Almost ever major software/hardware corporation is embroiled in unlicensed patent cases and you've been a party to them all. Have you ever owned a cell phone? Chances are it contained patents & copyrighted material that were owned by another company and unlicensed.
* Have you ever taken excerpts from a book or any kind of text online? How was it used, do you know what the Fair Use limitations are?
* Your PC downloads unlicensed video, audio, graphics all the time from web sites, and they are all copied to your computer and stored in cache.
* Do you have any shareware, demo software or browser plugins with expired licenses?
* Do you have any open source software in which you accidentally deleted the wrong .txt file which was required for its authorized use?
* Have you ever copied a friend's drawing or homework? Are you sure they didn't copyright it? It doesn't take much to copy protect your work or ideas.
* Have you ever used the old MP3.COM "music locker" service? (As you recall, the case was won in favor of the record labels.)
* MP3tunes allowed users to purchase music through their service and store in music lockers as well. The record labels viewed this as copyright infringement as well.
* Are you 100% positive that all of the software you use at work (installed by others) is fully licensed?
* Are you 100% positive that you don't have any software on your PC that has been sharing files, music, or videos on the internet?
* Have you ever downloaded free software without knowing you were only allowed to use it for 15 or 30 days?
* Have you ever used sound effects, logos, graphic materials or clip art without receiving a license directly from it's owner? How do you now the website you purchased the clip art from was licensed themselves to sell the art?
* Have you used Amazon or Google's cloud players? They're unlicensed.
* YouTube is a really big offender of copy protected material. It's saturated daily with unlicensed and illegal videos, songs, and other forms of art and material.
I love to hear the classic excuses for this type of thing too:
"YouTube? Well, I asked Yahoo Answers and everyone said it was legal. So it must be legal."
"If you delete your cache, the cops won't find anything. So yes, it's legal."
"Well, officer.. I didn't know is was copyrighted material!"
"I thought was legal. There wasn't any kind of notification telling me it wasn't."
"I'm just a kid, I didn't know it was illegal."
"I thought I could trust the website.. it looks official."
When you think about it, it's extremely difficult if not impossible NOT to pirate or unintentionally use patented material. A person (or website) may tell you one thing, but the record labels or entertainment industry might view it as the complete opposite. And just because a court case hasn't set a new legal precedent, that doesn't mean it's not piracy or wrong.
So, please don't complain about pirates.. after all, you're one of them. If you surf the internet, it's impossible for you not to be one. Unintentional pirates are still pirates.
If you complain about piracy, that makes you a hypocrit.. and a filthy pirate. If you didn't even know about your own crimes, then you're an filthy and incredibly ignorant pirate.
If you absolutely MUST complain, just complain about how they're a bigger pirate then you. It's a lot more honest.
And if you're still looking for some kind of loop hole, argument of oversimplification, or justification that you're not a pirate, then there's something I should tell you: Everything I posted on this blog is Copyright Me. You're not authorized to copy this, but I see that you have already in your active system memory and hard drive cache without my authorization. So, by reading this you've just confirmed that you're a pirate.
Welcome to the family. Arrrr.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 6/28/11
I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but the definition of a troll has changed. Here's the old definition; [LINK]
Basically, it was a method of self-entertainment by deliberately starting an argument by antagonizing a user or users. Rather than calling them Internet Trolls, however, they are simply referred to as Trolls now. The reason for this is because you can "troll" in real life, and it's not just limited to the internet or message boards any more.
Definitions are always constantly changing and evolving. You could even say that people who use the more "updated versions" of words are more progressive.. or daresay, evolved than those still using the old definition.
Consider the film "Idiocracy". The English language completely changed. To you, they would be considered less intelligent, but it was the next evolution and progression of the language. But consider that the you speak now would be considered foolish or less intelligent by your own forefathers.
Even individual definitions of words have completely changed. This was demonstrated very well in "The F Word" episode of Southpark; [LINK]
The term troll (and trolling) has reached a new level of progression. I think it happened about 6-12 months ago in fact.
The definition of a trolling is now something said or done to provoke any kind of emotional response (most commonly laughter) or any kind of matter not to be taken seriously.
If you make a joke or amusing anecdote, you're trolling. If you play a practical joke whether it causes laughter or anger, you're trolling. If something is amusing or ridiculous, it's a troll attempt. The troll will fail, however, if it's not funny or effective. Even farting on someone or farting in general is now considered trolling.
So yes, whether you like it or not the definition of a troll (and trolling) has radically changed. Although you could still relate trolling to it's previous definition incarnation, but just remember that it makes you less progressive than everyone else.
If someone plays a practical joke or posts something that gets an emotional (or serious) response, don't get angry at them and accuse them of not understanding what a troll is. Chances are, you're wrong and have just proved that you're less progressive (and evolved) than the others who understand the new and true definition.
You might as well get angry at people for not using the term gay as being happy and glad.. you primitive ape you.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 6/23/11
In RIFT, you can still make a little platinum by buying low and selling high but it can be quite tedious without mods to help you out.
One method I prefer is to organize AH results by "Time Left" and bid on items that are just about to expire. Crafting materials are the best, such as buying cloth and ore at their lowest (vendor) price. You only need to check the AH for new groups of expiring items every 1-2 hours since you will receive mail messages if you are undercut on the ones you have already bid for. I like to bid on items right before a shard reboot as well, it increases your chances of winning the item.
The other method is to buy items simply to vendor them. In WOW, there used to be a small profit to be made from buying low-cost bandage mats, and then vendoring for a profit. However, RIFT is a special case and large profit can be made from vendoring items that auction for less than their real value.
Search all AH items and organize by Unit Price. Then you mouse-over on each item to see what it vendors for, and compare to the Unit Price value. Bid or Buy Out any item that is being auctioned for less than the Vendor price.
In the following case, there is a profit to be made of 28s x 13 Celestite. This is not a lot so I usually target more expensive items but imagine 50-100 transactions per day giving you 1-50g per.
This occurs far more often than you can possibly realize. Some players are in a rush to auction multiple items, so they don't pay attention to the item's true (vendor) value. Others are in competition with other players and keep undercutting their prices, or they're sick and tired of an time not selling (especially runes) so they keep lowering it's price without realizing they can make more plat by just vendoring it.
The best items suitable for this method are gems, herbs (Krakenweed), Consumables (Potions), Runes, Scrolls & Armor Enhancements/Consumables, and Crafting Ingredients (like Pristine Femur and Hollow Bone). You can get the most bang for the buck with stackable items.
Each day, I can make 6-10p by just vendoring buy-out items. :)
It works better on larger population shards as well. On new shards, players are much more careful because they're more concerned about saving money.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 6/21/11
Other than rune disenchants, there's a lot of plat to be made from selling artifacts. They especially sell better on PVP shards since opposing-faction artifacts are more difficult to obtain.
Puzzles and Cairns [LINK] are a nice way to make some platinum, but you can only do them once, and usually you'll want to keep the gear yourself if you're leveling. You need plat strategies that provide a sustainable income.
The fastest method to collect artifacts is by cheating (e.g. fly hacking) which I will cover later. This method, however, is completely legitimate and can be done at very early levels.
There are two artifacts on the top peaks of the Sanctum bridge that are often overlooked by the Guardians. I like to create level 7-10 Defiant's on multiple shards and run them to Sanctum, park them on top of the bridge, and then use Mighty Leap to jump back and forth from each side of the bridge. Remember when I said that the jumping skill was invaluable? :)
Here's a video of the location and how to get up the side of the bridge:
After you create a new Defiant character and leave the tutorial instance, remember that there's a fatigue zone all around the newbie zone. You can't simply swim across the water channel to the Guardian side. However, if you look on your map there's a small island North North East of your starting location. Head towards the long stretch of land until you're on the northern tip closest to the island, and then swim straight for the island. You'll fatigue yourself just a little bit, but you'll still be able to swim across. Then just swim towards Sanctum and watch out for NPC aggro (there's not much, most mobs are closer to land.)
After you reach the Sanctum bridge, just climb around the edge on the South side of the bridge and hop onto the main road leading into town. In the early mornings, no one is there.
You can easily jump onto the bridge from max distance and get on top of the bridge without ever aggroing the guards. Don't fall off though, it's a pain in the arse to start again from the beginning. Once you're above the guards, you never have to worry about them attacking you.
Then it's a simple matter of logging in and logging out throughout the day to collect the nice white, green, and blue artifacts that drop in those two locations on top of the bridge arcs.
Due to the difficult of obtaining the opposite faction artifacts, even many of the white artifacts can be sold for 1p a piece on the Defiant side. Once your bags are full, you can just let the guards kill you and you'll respawn at the training zone near Meridian.
Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 6/16/11
This is a very easy method to gain plat, even at early levels.
Before I start though, I want to explain some prerequisites if you're serious about making RIFT Platinum. There are a few things you need to do first.
* All of your characters should be either a High Elf or Bahmi. Angelic Flight and Mighty Leap are INVALUABLE, I can't stress this enough. They're extremely useful for making plat and can get you out of tight situations like getting stuck. Time is money after all.
* Your MAIN character should be a Priest AOE build and should have all 3 gathering professions.
* Create a secondary MULE character that has Runecrafting, Outfitting, and Weaponsmithing. (As soon as you get out of your first training instance, run straight for Sanctuary or Meridian.)
* Your MAIN should always be mailing loot/mats to your MULE character for crafting purposes or selling on the AH.
I've leveled all classes to 50, and by the far the Priest is the fastest and most useful for collecting loot quickly. The Priest can also DPS, Heal and Tank.
As you're leveling your MAIN, simply send all of your gathered materials to your secondary character, have them construct cheap garments/weapons to level up and runebreak them. Most of your plat will be made from selling rune "disenchants". Don't waste your time with Runes (the "enchants"), there's very little plat to be made at low-med levels.
Alright, now that that's out of the way.. here's one simple strategy for making plat:
* There's always an imbalance of disenchant prices on the AH.
* If you have no plat, start out with Flickering Crystals (they sell for 2G or less ea), break them down, and sell the individual Flickering Powders for 50s each. That's a profit of 4.5g minus the 2g expense. Powders sell very well, and you can typically sell a dozen stacks per day (40-75g per stack).
* As you earn more gold/plat, use that as investments into more expensive disenchants and break them down (or upgrade the disenchants if the prices more favor that direction.)
* Familiarize yourself with the various levels of disenchants and how many mats you can collect by breaking them down.
Sentience Spark / Blast (5 Sparks) / Surge (15 Sparks)
Perpetual Blur / Glow (5 Blurs) / Flare (15 Blurs)
Kinetic Arc / Charge (5 Arcs) / Burst (15 Arcs)
There's always a vast difference in prices due to the imbalance of high/low leveled players.
For example, you can buy a Kinetic Burst for 40g, break it down, and resell the Arcs for 7g each giving you a profit of 1p 5g.
* Also very important, remember that you can TRANSMUTE one type of disenchant into another. You can convert between Bursts, Flares and Surges and all it costs is an additional Flickering Crystal which are very cheap. If a Kinetic Burst is selling for 80g, just purchase 40g Sentience Surges and convert them for profit.
* Always sell in large stacks and undercut your competition by a big amounts. Buyers will be hard pressed NOT to buy your disenchants due to their very reasonable prices.
* You will have a lot of competition, so make sure you're checking for undercuts every 30 minutes or so. You will need to cancel and re post your disenchants frequently, so I would recommend that you only post 1 or 2 of each Rune type.
I've played on over 10 servers (low-high population), and this strategy has been highly effective on all of them. I can typically make 30-40p per day just buying/selling disenchants and transmuting.
Here was another draft he had created a few days after his "Year of the Banhammer" blogspot.
So, yeah.. if you've been reading the blog for a while, you know I've been talking a lot about what to expect from Blizzard in 2011.
Because of decreasing WoW subscription growth and the expected lack of Activision Blizzard releases for the year, there's going to be a lot of cutbacks within the company and implementation of new paid services to increase revenue as much as possible (that have actually been planned for a long time, but were waiting for the right opportunity to deploy, like when revenues for the quarter were lower than expected) and before BlizzCon.
This isn't just for World of Warcraft, though, you can expect the same for their other line-up of games. Virtual items especially, and other paid services.
Shortly after posing this, Blizzard announced their new Winged Lion mount.
And then just 2 days after I mention "Maybe guild paid services?" they just announced Guild Paid Services. =]
Expect more. Virtual pets and mounts are good sellers, and they might even experiment with a price drop to see if they can increase demand for the item. Or the ever predictable tax-deductible charity approach. Perhaps a pet that will fit in with the lion or Egyptian theme?
How about "game breaking" items like a larger bag? (RIFT did it.) It probably won't be something to replace your default bag slot, though, but that's planned for all users in the future. A wise person would sell a larger/cool looking bag for $5 (to sell more of them, since everyone will want multiple) and announce that part of the proceeds will go to charity. It takes the sting off.
Maybe demon/elemental renaming services? Paid visual customizations of gear/clothes/items? Forum (or in-game) avatar customizations?
Cross-realm grouping or raiding? Their current Real ID feature is an easy way to implement this ability so that you can party with (PVP/Raiding) friends and family members.. for a price.
"Paid Un-Banning Services"? Pay to have a permanent ban changed to temporary ban (or have a really old account recovered) with the understanding that you'll play nice moving forwards (and monitored more closely during their probation period). If you work in Blizzard marketing, pay close attention to this. It sounds absolutely crazy, but it works and with little investment. =]
There are a lot of possibilities.
One thing is certain however, they have already made promises and commitments to WoW microtransactions (e.g. that they won't be game-breaking) but they haven't made any promises in regards to their other games.
Their Next-Gen MMO will probably take great liberties and flex "Blizzard ethics", and I can definitely foresee game-breaking transactions available in future titles. This shouldn't surprise you though, this is just the way Blizzard is heading and they've made all of the signs and trends quite obvious.
Flame on.
Unfortunately, over the past several months I've been flying a little too close to the sun.
It's still a pretty new blog (I started writing back in July '10) and I suppose this was ultimately fated to happen.
It's fitting, though, that it happened at the 9 month period too: like a newborn baby it was ready to explode from the womb.. but with a huge amount of information as the afterbirth, rather than pieces of placenta.
There was just way too much information collected and researched thoroughly.. and it was scary for some (e.g. the real costs of services and devices, profit margins, real players and subscription figures, extracted sales data, uncanny future predictions, new games and their release dates, the return (or introduction) of a ton of content that everyone believed were gone forever, correcting a ton of misinformation in gaming news, unannounced games, next-gen game details, what things are really like behind the veiled curtain, etc. etc.)
There were two big projects I was working on in the past couple months (one was actual subscription data, the other, well.. it was a huge spoiler). By investigating publicly-available information (very hard to find, but it's there), I had collected details about an upcoming next-gen MMO and even had concept art. It's still a few years away, but due to this current situation it's not anything that I can publish. Even where it came from (public data), it would still be considered "private, confidential, and proprietary" to a certain corporation. =]
I hope you enjoyed the fun, dramatic entertainment, critical analysis, the information and data, and frequent sarcasm. It was definitely one-of-a-kind, but a machine that accurately predicts the future and reveals future business plans and game details should not be permitted to exist.
They did what they had to do, and I understand completely from a business perspective. I love all of the games I've written about, and will continue to support the companies.. but I just can't research them in such great detail anymore.
On a related note, if you're in the game development field: get rid of your entire global internet footprint. You shouldn't have a Twitter account, a blog, a YouTube account, participate in any forums, play online games with people you don't know, share art or pictures, take pictures within your workplace and post them online, have a Facebook account, share details with OPEN Facebook accounts, or even have a Google account w/out making sure your Docs and Buzz are completely disabled. I don't even know where to get started.. I know way too much now.
Even when you have your "work" alias, and you create multiple new aliases and fake names across the internet (thinking that they're safe), it's still very easy to find out the new names and link them back to one person. Also, you shouldn't be surfing non-business related webpages from work.
As for me, time to move onto new adventures. There are a lot of options available, and I like to keep busy with fun side projects.
You can't know the future, though, without it's stakeholders kicking your ass.
(P.S. My email address was just another throw-away account, like this blog account. Time to implement "Plan Alpha".. see you all around.) =]
As mentioned, here are all of the wonderfully leaked goodies (ie, the "motherload" I mentioned). Most of this is related to this year's BlizzCon and I'm sure the (wrong) heads are probably going to roll after releasing this information. =]
Keep in mind, that I'm still not done yet.. this is just the tip of the iceberg. I've saved the best for last and I'm typing as quickly as I can.
- So just to recap, I've already covered the D3 release, the (insightful) financials and subscriber figures with a quick analysis.
- DIABLO 3: The "planned" beta release date will be announced at BlizzCon 2011. The D3 beta will actually be taking place this year, but it's in such a stable state, and no problems are expected, that they expect to have it out before Christmas 2011. Sorry for the duplication, I know I already talked about this and the backup 2nd quarter date.
- DIABLO 3: There's going to be a Diablo 3 press conference before the beta begins, so sometime around August. Below are big D3 details of what will either be announced at BlizzCon or during the press conference.
- DIABLO 3: There's going to be a level cap of 60 (future expansion packs will expand the level cap by 10, it's all just like WoW), they're already planning ahead for the next exp. pack and they have in fact cut out zones, art, and skills/abilities out of the main game to be saved up for later.
- DIABLO 3: It's going to require a persistent internet connection through Battle.net. Disappointing, but I'm not surprised.
- DIABLO 3: The big shocker: Blizzard will be allowing players to buy/sell items, players and gold using an in-game system and real world currency! Seriously, I can't make this shit up. Diablo 3 will be using Blizzard's first gold selling service which they've already been building into Battle.net / Blizzard store code. They're working on a new money meter and "banking system" into Battle.net accounts, so it will probably be a storage system like PayPal for real currency that can be used to purchase games and virtual stuff. This is all being used in future games too, and possible older ones. Players will be encouraged to "stay at home, play games, make money". Because of this, they're implementing a no mods/addon policy in D3 as mentioned earlier so that this system can't be exploited (e.g. Auctioneer).
- TITAN: Just wanted to throw this little piece in here because it's related to this new gold selling system. When you see the pictures in the next post, you'll know what I mean. There will be a lot of buying and selling of virtual and real world items in Titan (tied into heavy social interaction) and this new D3 development indicates that Blizzard wants their customers getting used to this new and controversial approach. I don't want to spoil anything else.. you'll see it soon enough. =]
- WOW FIRELANDS: (Note: This is still being updated). The Firelands content patch should be available in the next couple months. A friend of mine is digging through the details right now, but I'll update this section later today. It's a little low priority as you can imagine, but he did say something about a fire-based cat form for Druids and a flaming (Blizzard Store collectible) mount. =]
- WOW EXP PACK: (Another work in progress) A little more details below, but my sources tell me that the next expansion pack will focus on the Island of Pandaria. This is no April Fool's joke, and yes, they're running out of ideas. You can already guess what race will be playable, and there's going to be a new overpowered healing class. I'm still waiting for more details from my sources and I should have some confirmation soon, but they've never steered me wrong before.
- BLIZZCON 2011: They have much more excitement planned for 2011 and there's going to be a TRIFECTA of announcements. First, there's going to be details, a trailer video (and playable demos) of their next SC2 expansion pack (HOTS). Second, they will be announcing their next WoW Expansion Pack (the Pandarens) and there's a video demonstration with details planned (I'm trying to get more details). It sounds like their final expansion pack will be announced at BlizzCon 2013.. Third and finally, there will be the surprise announcement of the "imminent" D3 release. (They're making it the THIRD announcement on purpose.) =]
- TITAN CONT'D: There's not going to be a Titan announcement at BlizzCon 2011. It still needs a lot of work and they're not planning on revealing any details about it just yet. I suppose they could always whip something up to show off, but it can still undergo a lot of changes between now and 2014.
Phew.. deep breaths, deep breaths..
It's not over yet though! Even though this information sounds completely unbelievable and that official documentation was pretty undeniable, I'm positive that many of our more special visitors here will claim that everything is made up. In fact, I'm expecting a TON of skepticism.. that is until these official announcements are made. =]
(For those who haven't been drinking the blue kool-aid, it's going to feel great to be completely vindicated.)
I still have a lot more to write about which I'll do over the next couple days.. I have a LOT to say about that new gold selling system. I'm also expecting a lot of heavy traffic and questions, and I really don't know what's going to happen after revealing all of this information.
Alrighty.. onto the final reveal!
As you can tell by the those subscription and financials, things have been looking very bad over the past several months. Not only do these officially confirm the accuracy of previous estimates, but also the manipulation involved in the Subscriber™ definition. =]
As explained many times in the past, there's a significant difference between subscriptions and Blizzard Subscriptions™. Investors and the public get to see their public financials, but it's not like they're legally required to reveal actual subscriber numbers (or names) to anyone. They use a special definition for public announcements, but that's about it - and that number can be manipulated in any which way they want. I also have an interesting news reveal shortly where the Blizzard marketing team will soon be able to manipulate this number even further to their advantage. =]
Based on the subscription numbers, you can see that they've lost a little over 10% of their subscribers and they still haven't been able to fix their attrition issues while churn is in some serious trouble (i.e. the rate of losing players has been higher than gaining players for almost a year now.)
In regards to the sudden drop in players (and associated revenue), I'm not sure how they can keep this information hidden any longer. I don't know how they can continue justifying their public financials considering the massive losses in micro-transactions and pet/store sales. Even with such a sudden drop (ie, 700-800k Subscriptions™), I don't think an official or documented announcement will ever be made. The Q1 (Jan/Feb/Mar) 2011 financials call is coming up in a couple months and I'm really looking forwards to it, especially after the massive release of all of this information. =]
You should see some interesting and more desperate actions soon in order to increase their revenue. One of them is new pet/store sales, but I'll be putting that up in another post right after this one before my 2 major updates.
One of their acts of desperation, which I think I've talked about in the past, is turning World of Warcraft into a F2P system like what everyone else is doing. That's right! Blizzard is planning changing their treasured game into a F2P structure.. well, sort of. Basically, the free 14-day trial period is being changed to unlimited play up to level 20. The announcement is planned "at the end of Q2 2011", so you should hear about it very soon.
This information was actually pretty easy to find, a ton of employees knew about it already so I didn't have to go through my usual channels. I don't know any more details over than the F2P modification, however, because they need to keep gold farmers and spammers on a leash, I'm sure you'll see a lot of restrictions in place similar to the trial method. For example, chat, AH restrictions, and probably a limit on gold and/or a bank limit so that they can't be used as mules. I'm also not surprised by the timing of the announcement either, it's right at the cusp of a new quarter in which they want to drive their revenue and artificially increase subscription numbers. =]
You see, this new approach reeks of both desperation and brilliance. Subscription attrition has reached a terrible state, and they're going to continue plummeting for years to come. However, because of this new method and the influx of "free players", it will artificially increase their Subscription™ count astronomically. Will they be changing their special Subscriber™ definition, or will it remain the same? If you ever see a "12 million" or "13 million subscriber" announcement in the future, just remember that 3-4 million of those "subs" might be in fact F2P players. =] And those numbers don't even come close to real players as you're well aware..
From what I can tell, this is just the first step in a new long-term plan and they have a lot of other stuff scheduled for the future (e.g. lowering the cost of WoW, reduced expansion pack price points, and eventual subscription fees). I didn't like the "Cataclysm experiment", but I do like this experiment.. I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner.
Okay, now that I'm past all of the boring stuff, it's time to move onto the more important and mind-blowing updates! Should be up momentarily so please hold tight.. I'm sifting through a ton of information and emails here and trying to sort things out to find the important bits.
Hmmm.. saw an interesting new domain registration just yesterday.
Here's the link, check it out:
http://www.activisioncommercialsummit.com
It's an Activision / Blizzard streaming webpage apparently for an upcoming conference (called the "Activision Commercial Summit") on 03/23/2011. Seems like they're cutting it awfully short and I have no idea what this is.
The domain was registered by CUBIC COMUNICACION AUDIOVISUAL (in Barcelona) who will be providing the streaming services of the event. There's no streaming video available at the moment, it's locked. (There's a chat channel attached to the video stream too, usually something like this is reserved for business conferences.)
I'll search around, and see if I can dig up more information about this summit. There are some educational gaming conferences taking place this month. Or, maybe this is just testing (or a sales pitch) for an event they'll be potentially hosting in the future.
Have you guys heard anything about this? Anything that Activision is supposed to be announcing in Barcelona on March 23rd?
* UPDATE (03/21/2011):
The webpage has been updated with the following news item:
"The Activision EU Commercial Summit stream will commence at 10am GMT+1"
And there's a countdown clock now too.
The thing is, Blizzard is very predictable in regards to their ban waves.
They've been collecting user details for months, but wait until a certain time before banning all players at once. Banning still occurs on a regular monthly basis, mind you, but those are for high visibility infractions (e.g. botting that's noticeable by other players.) They want to keep their customers as happy as possible, so exploits/bots that are more visible are dealt with more expediently.
There's a significant amount of revenue to be made from banning accounts.. for one, the players purchase WoW and the expansion packs again, and they pay for a new subscription. It also looks good on paper because it counts as 2 "active subscriptions" since the banned account was already paid until the end of the month.
Blizzard will have large ban waves when revenue is typically lower than expected. They want to make sure their quarterly returns are as high as possible (to impress their shareholders), so bans typically take place during certain quarters.
This well-timed ban wave takes place right before their first quarter ending March 31, 2011. It's also taking place right before pay day. Coincidence? I don't think so. =]
(Note: It's not a very good sign that this took place so soon after Cataclysm sales either.)
As you're aware, Activision Blizzard prepared their shareholders during their last conference with the knowledge that they shouldn't expect any major game releases this year. With that in mind, they still need to drive revenue as best they can - meaning this year, you should expect either new paid services (or existing services with a twist like special discounts) and/or new virtual pets or other items that can be purchased. We might see some new merchandising, or other cool little things to increase revenue. You can also expect increased banning and re-activation of accounts. =]
This applies to all of Blizzard's games, not just World of Warcraft.
And if that wasn't interesting enough, look what Blizzard just posted (Source):
So Homefront launched today, I forgot all about it actually. =]
It will be a couple days before THQ releases sales figures information (if it's not doing so well, though, they won't release many details or even make an announcement at all.) The revelation of the Single Player mission being only 5 hours long couldn't have helped matters.
I'm always interested in future predictions made by industry experts, but that sort of information is very difficult to come by. No one wants to make educated guesses any more (for fear of being incorrect), and most analysts wait until the last minute (eg 24 hours after launch to make a "prediction of first week's sales") or wait until they can see Pre-Order numbers before making any predictions.
Here are the most prominent sales predictions for Homefront, for example:
1. Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian predicts 1.5 million sales by the end of this month.
2. Michael Pachter doesn't expect Homefront sales to do very well, but he never provided any figures and kept his comments as vague as possible (he's been doing this more often unfortunately).
3. And then there's "HULIQ", they forecasted that sales figures for Homefront will hit 1.25 million in the first 6 months and 2 million by 12 months. Provided, of course, that they release one high-quality DLC, and offer a stable multiplayer experience, etc. I've never heard of HULIQ before, but the webpage looks a little sketchy and needs some major updates.
Most recent reviews of Homefront have made one thing very certain: the multiplayer experience isn't anything like Black Ops. In BO, an inexperienced camper can just stand in one place and get a 20-kill streak. Homefront is different, leaving brainless gamers very frustrated with the game since they won't survive as long as they could in BO (or earn achievements as quickly). Experienced players are finding the multiplayer experience quite refreshing and fun however. It's like Cataclysm Heroics for FPS players.
So, although initial sales won't be as high during the first week - I think the game can have some real staying power thanks to it's multiplayer experience (the "perk" system looks very cool too).
I wish that there were more industry experts out there predicting this kind of stuff though, even if they're wrong at least they can give a reason as to WHY they made their prediction. The best articles I've read are the ones with figures, past comparisons, trends, and logical reasoning as to why they picked that number.
For example, consider LA Noire.
I make a lot of decisions based on what people are saying about the game, and the general consensus is that LA Noire is going to be an awesome game. But, I'm getting a very bad feeling about what people are really saying about it.
Most are saying it awesome, but they're not saying the gameplay or story is awesome, they're praising the setting and new facial capture technology. It's not, "You gotta play this game, it's brilliant and so fun!", instead it's "OMG. Check out that facial capture technology! Look at their faces, they're so real! The faces! The faces!".
For those fortunate enough to have played the LA Noire demo, they played the best parts: the clue gathering and interrogation mini-games. However, 20 minutes isn't enough time to make a decision about the game.. did they consider that they would be playing the same mini-games over and over and over throughout the entire length of the game?
The game has been described as Rockstar's most adult oriented or "serious game". It's a slower paced game than their other lineups, and a lot of time has been spent on facial capture and voice acting. So, you can anticipate a LOT of cut scenes and player conversations.
From what I've seen, it appears to be a very linear (and slow paced) interactive detective novel, with conversational mini-games, and a lot of cut scenes that could potentially interfere with gameplay. Once the novelty of their faces and voice acting wear off, that's what you're left with.
Word is that it's impossible to fail a case too (all of the cases are pre-determined too, it's not like Clue where there are random killings, random scenarios, and random evidence.)
I know that I'm going to enjoy the game myself, but I'm getting a bad feeling that many players are going to be disappointed after playing the game "for real". Re-playability is also a big concern in it's present state, but it can be solved through DLC.
Bethesda's games for example (Fallout 3, Oblivion, Morrowind, etc.) I absolutely loved, but I _hated_ the same old NPC interactions and vendor menus (which they replicated across all of their games). It's the one thing I never really like about the game, but fortunately they weren't a significant part of the game. In LA Noire, player interactions ARE a big part of the game. When questioning suspects, I suspect that players will start seeing the exact same facial cues and "looks" over-and-over, which kills a lot of the fun in try to determine guilt, innocence, or deception (of course, they need to dumb it down though so as not to frustrate inexperience players.)
Pachter said that he would never underestimate Rockstar again, so whimsically predicted that LA Noire would sell as many games as Red Dead Redemption had. Problem is, Rockstar is publishing the game this time around.. Team Bondi is developer. The reason he underestimated RDR the first time is because he thought the genre/setting was too limited. I think this is true for LA Noire though, a western shooter has a tremendous market size compared to a detective game.
Is it mostly an interactive detective novel though? Do most people realize that it's not like GTA/RDR in terms of gameplay? I don't know.
What I do know is that I'm getting the same old SPORE-like vibe from this upcoming game release. Screenshots and demos are showing off the best parts (to control perception of the game), there's a huge amount of hype, gameplay videos are limited, players are expecting one thing (but they're going to get something different), and gamers are forgetting about re-playability and repetition (e.g. mini-games) within the game.
Anyways.. I think there's going to be a big explosion of sales during the first month, as people will be expecting the currently promoted game (the perception is RDR in the 1940's), but they'll be getting something completely different out of the box. Once the initial novelty wears off though, sales will decline and I don't think they'll reach the same heights as RDR. Either way, though, first day sales are definitely going to be highly successful for Rockstar.